From:
Geza Radics
[mailto:gezaradics@att.net]
Sent: Friday, December 24, 2010 6:44 AM
To: HungClub
Subject:
The Hungarian language
By Grover S. Krantz
PETER LANG, New York – Bern – Frankfurt am Main –
Paris, 1988.
American University Studies. Series XI. Anthropology
and Sociology. Vol. 26.
(Krantz
was the teacher of Physical Anthropology at Washington State University; he
developed a model by which he studied the origin of the European languages.)
Excerpts:
Page 10-11:
“This would include, for example, developing Greek in its present area since
6500 B. C., and Celtic in Ireland since 3500 B. C. The antiquity of Magyar in
Hungary may be equally surprising; I find it to be a Mesolithic speech that
predates Neolithic entry.”
Page 11: “It
is usually stated that the Uralic Magyars Moved into Hungary from an eastern
source in the 9th Century A. D. I find instead that all the other
Uralic speakers expended out of Hungary is the opposite direction, and at a much
earlier date.”
Page 64:
“The frontier of the full Neolithic economy continued to move eastward and
eventually pinched out between the converging lines of the 120-day growing
season on the north and the edge of deep soils on the south. These met on the
western slopes of the Ural Mountains, and this point should have been reached
about 1750 B. C. Beyond the 120-day season, both north and east, there would be
the reindeer-based Uralic pastoralists. To the south, in the deep soils, would
be the cattle-based Altaic pastoralists.”
(So, there you have it. This is the historic
background of the relationship between the Uralic and Altaic people, and their
language. The eastward expansion also supported by archeological finds.)
Page 72:
“Uralic languages today are spoken across much of Northern Europe and Asia, and
in Hungary. Within the U.S.S.R. the Uralic Altaic minorities are now distributed
with the former mostly in the forest zone and the latter in the steppes.
According to most authorities the original Uralic homeland was in the Ural
Mountain area, hence the name. From this central location these people
supposedly spread out in all directions to reach their present distribution, and
entered Hungary in 896 A. D.
I find all of this highly improbable for various
reasons. A geographically central location is no evidence that this is the
original site of a language group. The reason for its spread must be
demonstrated – it cannot be assumed to have expanded automatically, and equally,
in all direction. The penetration of Central Europe in the 9th
century by a northern Asian tribe is possible. But a population replacement,
or even a language change, by such tribe within a well-populated agricultural
region like Hungary at that time is clearly impossible. Any such claim
should be accompanied by an explanation of the mechanism whereby this change
might have been accomplished.
Given these objections the actual Uralic speaking
distributions would allow only one alternative explanation – that the family
originated in Hungary and spread out in the opposite direction. This poses no
serious problem if the time for this is origin and dispersion is put at the
earliest Neolithic. If this is true it means that Hungarian (Magyar) is
actually the oldest in-place language in all of Europe.”
*
*
*
Sir John Bowring British diplomat and
linguist stated in his book titled Poetry of the Magyars,
published in 1830: "The Magyar language stands afar off and alone. The study
of other tongues will be found of exceedingly little use towards its right
understanding. It is molded in a form essentially its own, and its construction
and composition may be safely referred to an epoch when most of the living
tongues of Europe either had no existence, or no influence on the Hungarian
region."
*
*
*
Arthur Custance quotes the Canadian Sir
William Dawson from his book titled Fossil Men and Their Modern
Representatives of 1883: “If we leave out of account purely imitative
words, as those derived from the voices of animals, and from natural sounds,
which necessarily resemble each other everywhere, it will be found that the most
persistent words are those like "God," "house," "man," etc., which express
objects or ideas of constant recurrence in the speech of everyday life, and
which in consequence become most perfectly stereotyped in the usage of primitive
peoples. Further, a very slight acquaintance with these languages is sufficient
to show that they are connected with the older languages of the Eastern
continent by a great variety of more permanent root words, and with some even on
grammatical structure. So persistent is this connection trough the time, that
pages might be filled with modern English, French, or German words, which are
allied to those of the Algonquin tribes as well as to the oldest tongues of
Europe, Basques and Magyar, and the East.”
(http://custance.org/Library/Volume6/Part_V/Chapter1.html)
*
*
*
The Economist:
The marvellous Magyar microcars
Dec 16th 2010 |
BUDAPEST
| from PRINT EDITION
“Such skill at
innovative thinking could well be rooted in the complexity of the Hungarian
language, which has three levels of formality, direct and indirect conjugation
of verbs, and also demands rhyming vowel harmony. Saying anything in
Hungarian demands an instantaneous series of mental calculations before a
sentence can be constructed and a clear meaning communicated. A Hungarian,
the old joke goes, is someone who enters a revolving door behind you but comes
out in front. This inbuilt skill at seeking solutions to complex problems, and a
talent for quick lateral thinking, proved vital for the Magyars during centuries
of foreign rule and was especially useful under Communism.”